US Senate career of Joe Biden
served as a United States senator representing Delaware from January 3, 1973, to January 15, 2009, then served as Vice President of the United States from January 20, 2009 to January 20, 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Biden was narrowly elected to the Senate in 1972 and won re-election six other times; having served for 36 years, he remains Delaware's longest-serving U.S. senator. As a senator, Biden drafted and led the effort to pass the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and the Violence Against Women Act. He also oversaw six U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings, including the contentious hearings for Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. He resigned from his seat to serve as Vice President of the United States under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017; making him Senate President.
As a county councilor, Biden ran against incumbent Republican J. Caleb Boggs in 1972, after facing no Democratic rivals. He ran under a small-scale family-run campaign, but his energy and voter connectivity appealed to the public. After Biden was elected, his wife and infant daughter died in a car accident. Biden was persuaded not to resign and commuted to Delaware throughout his Senate career to care for his two sons, Beau and Hunter, both of whom had survived the crash. He married Jill Tracy Jacobs in 1977; their daughter Ashley was born in 1981.
During his early years in the Senate, Biden focused on consumer protection and the environment. He played a key role in passing the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, which was controversial for several "tough-on-crime" provisions. He later expressed regret over this. Biden voted to ban homosexuals from serving in the military and to bar the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages. He championed arms control concerning the SALT treaties. He clashed with the Reagan administration over its support for apartheid-era South Africa. He was a leading opponent of mandatory desegregation busing. In 1987, Biden ran for president, but withdrew due to incidents of plagiarism coming to light. The following year, Biden received brain surgery after suffering aneurysms.
As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden presided over the contentious Supreme Court nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. Biden voiced opposition to Bork's originalism. During the Thomas hearings, Biden's style was criticized and Thomas felt his questions were meant to damage him. Biden disclosed Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment to the rest of the committee, but not the public. Later he refused other witnesses to be heard. Biden also opposed his confirmation. Later he expressed regret to Hill. He spearheaded the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. Biden was critical of the actions of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr during the 1990s Whitewater controversy and Clinton–Lewinsky scandal investigations and voted to acquit on both charges during the impeachment of Bill Clinton.
Concerning foreign policy, Biden was generally a liberal internationalist, collaborating with Republicans and sometimes opposing fellow Democrats. He voted against authorizing the Gulf War, saying the US was bearing almost all the burden in the anti-Iraq coalition. He was strongly involved with policy towards the Yugoslav Wars. He supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he assembled witnesses who grossly misrepresented Saddam Hussein, his government and claimed possession of weapons of mass destruction. Later he regretted his support for the Iraq War. Biden supported military installations in Delaware and Amtrak, which he used to commute. He supported bankruptcy legislation sought by a Delaware company, in opposition to leading Democrats and consumer rights organizations. He was one of the least wealthy members of the Senate, and was known for his gaffes.
In 2001, Biden became the senior United States Senator from Delaware and the dean of the state's congressional delegation after his fellow colleague William Roth left following his defeat in the 2000 Senate election.
In 2007–2008, Biden ran for president again. His campaign was damaged by allegedly racially charged gaffes. He never reached double digits in the polls and dropped out after the Iowa caucus. While Biden and his fellow senator Barack Obama had initially disliked each other, Obama came to appreciate Biden and picked him to be his running mate. They went on to defeat Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin. Biden later resigned from the Senate to become vice president under Obama. In the 2020 United States presidential election, four years after he left office, Biden became the 46th president of the United States, serving from 2021 to 2025.
Electoral history
Following his first election in 1972, Biden was reelected to six more Senate terms, in 1978, 1984, 1990, 1996, 2002, and 2008, usually getting about 60% of the vote. He did not face strong opposition; Pete du Pont, then governor, chose not to run against him in 1984. Biden was Delaware's junior senator for 28 years due to the two-year seniority of his colleague Republican William Roth. After Tom Carper defeated Roth in 2000, Biden became Delaware's senior senator. He then became the longest-serving senator in Delaware history and, as of 2018, was the 18th-longest-serving senator in U.S. history. In May 1999, Biden became the youngest senator to cast 10,000 votes.1972 U.S. Senate campaign in Delaware
Biden was a member of the New Castle County Council, ran in the senate election against Republican incumbent senator J. Caleb Boggs. Boggs was considering retirement, which would likely have left incumbent U.S. Representative Pete du Pont and Wilmington Mayor Harry G. Haskell Jr. in a divisive primary fight. To avoid that, President Nixon helped convince Boggs to run again with full party support. No other Democrat wanted to run against Boggs.Biden's campaign had little and was given no chance of winning. His sister, Valerie Biden Owens, managed his campaign and other family members staffed it. The campaign relied upon handed-out newsprint position papers and meeting voters face-to-face; the state's smallness and lack of a major media market made that approach feasible. He did receive some help from the AFL–CIO and Democratic pollster Patrick Caddell. His campaign focused on withdrawal from Vietnam, the environment, civil rights, mass transit, more equitable taxation, health care, the public's dissatisfaction with politics as usual, and "change". During the summer, he trailed by almost 30 percentage points, but his energy level, his attractive young family, and his ability to connect with voters' emotions gave him an advantage over the ready-to-retire Boggs. Biden won the November7 election by 3,162 votes.
Family deaths
On December 18, 1972, Biden's wife Neilia and their one-year-old daughter Amy were killed in an automobile accident in Hockessin, Delaware, causing each of his children bone fractures. Biden considered resigning to care for them, but Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield persuaded him not to.Start and remarriage
Biden was sworn into office on January 5, 1973, by secretary of the Senate Francis R. Valeo in a small chapel at the Delaware Division of the Wilmington Medical Center. Beau was wheeled in with his leg still in traction; Hunter, who had already been released, was also there, as were other members of the extended family. Witnesses and television cameras were also present and the event received national attention.At age thirty, Biden became the seventh-youngest senator in U.S. history, and one of only eighteen who took office before turning thirty-one. However, the accident that killed his wife and daughter left him filled with both anger and religious doubt: "I liked to at night when I thought there was a better chance of finding a fight... I had not known I was capable of such rage... I felt God had played a horrible trick on me." To be at home every day for his two young sons, Biden began commuting every day by an Amtrak train ninety minutes each way from his Delaware home to Washington, D.C., which he continued to do throughout his Senate career. In the accident's aftermath, Biden had trouble focusing on work and appeared to just go through the motions of being a senator. In his memoirs, Biden notes that his staffers were taking bets on how long he would last. A single father for five years, he left standing orders that he be interrupted in the Senate at any time if his sons called. In remembrance of his wife and daughter, Biden does not work on December 18, the anniversary of the accident.
In 1975, Biden met teacher Jill Tracy Jacobs, which he credits her with renewing his interest in both politics and life. They married in 1977 at the Chapel at the United Nations in New York, and welcomed their daughter Ashley in 1981.
Early activities
During his first years in the Senate, Biden focused on consumer protection and environmental issues and called for greater government accountability. In 1974, Biden was named by Time magazine as one of the 200 Faces for the Future in a profile that mentioned what had happened to his family, calling him "self-confident" and "compulsively ambitious". In a June 1, 1974, interview with the Washingtonian, Biden described himself as liberal on civil rights and liberties, senior citizens' concerns and healthcare, but conservative on other issues, including abortion and the draft.Biden became ranking minority member of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary in 1981. In 1984, he was a Democratic floor manager for the successful passage of the Comprehensive Crime Control Act. Over time, the law's tough-on-crime provisions became controversial on the left and among criminal justice reform proponents, and in 2019 Biden called his role in passing the legislation a "big mistake". His supporters praised him for modifying some of the law's worst provisions, and it was his most important legislative accomplishment at that time. He first considered running for president that year, after gaining notice for speeches he gave to party audiences that simultaneously scolded and encouraged Democrats.
In 1993, Biden voted in favor of 10 U.S.C. §654, a section of a broader federally mandated policy that deemed homosexuality incompatible with military life thereby banning gay Americans from serving in the United States armed forces in any capacity without exception. The law was subsequently modified by President Clinton through the issuance of DOD Directive 1304.26 which accommodated "closeted" service to the extent that a servicemember's homosexual sexual orientation was neither discovered nor disclosed. The ban was held unconstitutional in Log Cabin Republicans v. United States for violation of First and Fifth Amendment rights.
In 1996, Biden voted in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibited the federal government from recognizing any same-sex marriage, barring individuals in such marriages from equal protection under federal law, and allowing states to do the same. In 2013, Section3 of DOMA was ruled unconstitutional and partially struck down in United States v. Windsor. The Obama Administration did not defend the law and congratulated Windsor. In 2015, DOMA was ruled unconstitutional in totality in Obergefell v. Hodges.
Regarding foreign policy, during his first decade in the Senate, Biden focused on arms control issues. In response to Congress's refusal to ratify the SALT II Treaty signed in 1979 by Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and President Jimmy Carter, Biden took the initiative to meet with Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko, educate him about American concerns and interests, and secure several changes to address the Foreign Relations Committee's objections. When the Reagan administration wanted to interpret the 1972 SALT I Treaty loosely to allow the Strategic Defense Initiative to proceed, Biden argued for strict adherence to the treaty's terms. He clashed again with the Reagan administration in 1986 over economic sanctions against South Africa, receiving considerable attention when he excoriated Secretary of State George P. Shultz at a Senate hearing because of the administration's support of that country, which continued to practice apartheid. Biden claimed neutrality on the 1982 Lebanon War in public, but was described to have been more enthusiastic about Israel's invasion of Lebanon than the Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, in a June 1982 private meeting between Begin and the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee.